Cannabis and sound system culture have shared a history for decades. At Submersion Festival this fall, Magic Garden Botanicals’ Smoke Village continues it.
Submersion Festival returns to Paradise Lakes Campground in Hammonton, New Jersey, from October 1 through 3, bringing three days of bass music to the edge of the Pine Barrens. Hosted by the Philadelphia and New York collectives Aspire Higher and Transmit, the festival is built around sound system culture, with styles including UK bass, dub, jungle, and dubstep played across two stages from early afternoon until sunrise.
The lakeside Beach Stage runs a Funktion-One rig, while the Woods Stage features a large custom-built system. It is a boutique, independently run event, open to attendees 21 and over.
This year, Magic Garden Botanicals is sponsoring the Smoke Village, a dedicated cannabis space within the festival. The pairing fits the setting more closely than a typical festival sponsorship, for reasons that reach back decades.
A Festival Setting With a Long Memory
Sound system culture began in Kingston, Jamaica, in the years after World War II. Operators assembled mobile setups of amplifiers, turntables, and large speaker stacks, then staged dances in yards and halls across the city. Those dances helped popularize ska and rocksteady, and they produced the selectors and toasters who were early forerunners of the modern DJ and MC.
Cannabis ran through the culture from the beginning. Ganja carried sacramental significance in the Rastafari communities that shaped the music’s message, and it was part of the ritual of the dance itself. That connection produced one of the most recognizable cannabis statements in popular music, Peter Tosh’s 1976 single “Legalize It.”
The link ran beyond lyrics and into the way the music was made. In the 1970s, Jamaican engineers such as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry stripped existing recordings down into bass-forward “versions,” inventing dub and, with it, the blueprint for the remix. Dancehall, hip-hop, drum and bass, and dubstep all owe a debt to that studio experimentation, which took shape inside the same sound system culture where cannabis was a constant presence.
As Caribbean communities settled in the United Kingdom, sound system culture traveled with them. Homemade rigs in cities such as London and Liverpool became a backbone of Afro-Caribbean community life and testing grounds for new styles. Dub influenced jungle, jungle developed into drum and bass, and by the early 2000s the lineage extended to dubstep, known for its half-time rhythms and heavy sub-bass.
A dedicated cannabis space at a bass festival, then, continues a tradition of communal areas that traces back to the earliest sound system dances, rather than introducing something unrelated to the music on the stages.
The Smoke Village Fits the Moment
The sponsorship arrives at a significant point for on-site cannabis consumption in New Jersey, where for most of the state’s legal history there were few lawful places to consume outside a private residence. The state’s Smoke-Free Air Act restricts cannabis use in indoor public spaces, and public consumption is limited across parks, beaches, and most shared areas, which left adults able to buy from licensed dispensaries but often without anywhere legal to use what they bought.
That began to change in 2025. In July, the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission approved the state’s first cannabis consumption area endorsements, and the first lounges opened that August in Atlantic City, Merchantville, and Newark. These are designated spaces attached to licensed dispensaries where adults 21 and over can consume on-site. They require municipal approval, operate under strict ventilation standards, cannot sell food or alcohol, and prohibit patrons from leaving with an open package.
The process is gradual and closely regulated, but it marks a shift toward legal, communal consumption of the kind that has long been central to sound system culture. The Smoke Village reflects that same movement at a festival scale, arriving in the same period the state has begun to formally permit on-site consumption areas.
Local Flower, House-Made Oil, And A New Jersey Brand
Magic Garden Botanicals is a Tri-State cannabis company founded in 2024 and operating across New York and New Jersey. The brand describes its approach as rooted in legacy and reimagined for luxury, aimed at New York and New Jersey consumers, and its best-known product is a pre-roll.
Magic Garden’s products start with flower grown in New York and New Jersey, which the company treats as central to its identity rather than a logistical detail. That flower forms the base of its pre-rolls, while its vapes, gummies, and concentrates are built from house-produced oil made by a method the company calls Advanced Phytonic Extraction, or APE.
According to Magic Garden, the process uses non-chlorinated fluoro-hydrocarbon solvents known as phytosols, which it describes as non-flammable, non-toxic, and inert, in place of options such as hydrocarbons or supercritical CO2. The same oil runs across the full range, which the brand frames as a way to keep the experience consistent from one format to the next, and it makes certificates of analysis available for potency and purity.
That pre-roll, the Loosie, has earned considerable recognition in a short span. It won Best Non-Infused Pre-Roll at MJUnpacked in New Jersey in 2025. At the first High Times Cannabis Cup New Jersey, held at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City on May 1, 2026 and judged by more than 2,500 members of the state’s cannabis community, Magic Garden took first place in two pre-roll categories: Standard Pre-Rolls with the Loosie, and Infused Pre-Rolls Hybrid with the Loosie Hash Hole. For a company that launched the same year New Jersey’s young adult-use market was still finding its footing, those results reflect a rapid rise.
Loosie anchors the lineup. It is an infused pre-roll, meaning the flower is packed with concentrate rather than rolled on its own, a construction the brand says produces a slow, even burn and a fuller terpene profile than a standard joint.
The award-winning Loosie Hash Hole runs a core of hash through the center of the roll, and the Loosie comes in strain-specific options across indica, hybrid, and sativa. Around it sit the 5 On It pre-roll five-pack made for sharing, the E Jay disposable vape, Dartz disposable dab syringes that dispense measured doses of full-spectrum concentrate, and Flat Headz, a vegan gummy line the company says is infused only with its own full-spectrum oil rather than hemp-derived cannabinoids.
The Culture Is in the Setting
Submersion Festival brings the whole thing into one place: bass music, large sound systems, a lakeside campground, and a dedicated cannabis space. The pairing works not because a cannabis company found a music festival to sponsor. It is that the culture surrounding the music has a history with cannabis that predates the sponsorship by generations.
The Smoke Village reflects that same movement at a festival scale, arriving as the state begins to formally permit on-site consumption areas.
For anyone heading to the festival, the appeal is bigger than another place to buy or another branded activation to walk through. It is a chance to experience cannabis culture in a setting where sound, community, and shared space have always been part of the experience.
The Loosie and the rest of the Magic Garden Botanicals line are available at licensed dispensaries across New Jersey.
Sponsored Content Disclosure: This story was created under a paid commercial arrangement with Magic Garden Botanicals. Historical and regulatory information is attributed to outside sources throughout the article. Descriptions of Magic Garden Botanicals, its products, production methods, and festival participation are based on company-provided information unless otherwise noted.
